What is a scientific paper?

1. What is a scientific paper? A central part of research. An organized description of hypotheses, data and conclusions, intended to instruct the reader. Interesting and unpublished is equivalent to non-existent. Your objective in research is to formulate and test hypotheses, to draw conclusions from these tests, and to teach these conclusions to others. Essential to understand the hypotheses (goals) while collecting data. To develop hypotheses towards a high quality publication a complete understanding of current literature in your research field is critical. adapted from “ WhitesidesG. Adv. Mater. 2004, 16, 1375-1377.”

2. A paper is a structure for planning your research in progress Not just an archival device for storing a completed project. A good outline for the paper is also a good plan for the research program. The continuous effort to understand, analyze,summarize, and reformulate hypotheses on paper is immensely more efficient for you than a process in which you collect data and only start to organize them when their collection is "complete“. adapted from “ WhitesidesG. Adv. Mater. 2004, 16, 1375-1377.”

3. Much of the time in writing a paper goes into the text. Most of the thought goes into the organization/analysis of data. More efficient to go through several cycles of an initial outline rather than many versions of the full text. With the data and organization in-hand, the supporting text can be assembled fairly easily. adapted from “ WhitesidesG. Adv. Mater. 2004, 16, 1375-1377.”

4. What is an outline? A written plan of the organization of a paper, including the data on which it rests. Specifically an outline consists of a carefully organized set of data, with concise objectives, hypotheses, and conclusions, rather than an outline of text (an outline contains little text). To construct an outline you must ask yourself many questions regarding the nature of your research. adapted from “ WhitesidesG. Adv. Mater. 2004, 16, 1375-1377.”

5. Constructing an outline Why am I proposing/conducting this work? What are the central motivations? How does this work progress the research field? What hypotheses do I plan to test? What methods are required to test these hypotheses? Sketch possible equations, figures, and schemes to illustrate the major ideas? Do not write any significant amount of text; get all the data in its proper place and give a very brief description. adapted from “ WhitesidesG. Adv. Mater. 2004, 16, 1375-1377.”

6. Revising your outline What hypothesis did I actually test? What were the results? What experiments did I conduct? Are these satisfactory? What additional experiments are needed? Did the work yield a new method/model of synthesis/analysis? How were methods/models characterized/calibrated. adapted from “ WhitesidesG. Adv. Mater. 2004, 16, 1375-1377.”

7. If you start the research to test one hypothesis, and later realize that the data really tests a different hypothesis combine relevant objectives of both hypotheses. Often the objectives of a paper when it is finished are different from those used to justify starting the work. Much of good science is opportunistic and revisionist. adapted from “ WhitesidesG. Adv. Mater. 2004, 16, 1375-1377.”

8. Drafting your paper When you have written down what you can, start with another piece of paper and try to organize the jumble of the first one. Sort all of your ideas into three major sections: Introduction Results and Discussion Conclusions (most publications have downloadable templates available) adapted from “ WhitesidesG. Adv. Mater. 2004, 16, 1375-1377.”

9. Introduction The opening sentence should concisely state the papers objective and: Justification for these objectives + relevance to the field. Background -Who else has done what? How? What has your lab published previously? What should the reader watch for in the paper? What are the interesting high points? What strategy did we use? What should the reader expect as conclusion? adapted from “ WhitesidesG. Adv. Mater. 2004, 16, 1375-1377.”

10. Results and Discussion This section should be organized according to major topics. The separate parts should have subheadings in boldface to make this organization clear, and to help the reader scan through the final text to find the parts of interest. Try to make these section headings as specific and information rich as possible. e.g. “The Rate of Self-Exchange Decreases with The Polarity of The Solvent" is longer but more informative of than just "Measurement of Rates". adapted from “ WhitesidesG. Adv. Mater. 2004, 16, 1375-1377.”

11. Conclusions In the outline, summarize the conclusions of the paper as a list of short phrases or sentences. Do not repeat what is in the Results section, unless special emphasis is needed. The Conclusions section should be just that, and not a summary. Conclusions should add a new, higher level of analysis, and should indicate explicitly the significance of the work. adapted from “ WhitesidesG. Adv. Mater. 2004, 16, 1375-1377.”

12. Conclusion (of this ppt) A paper is a collection of experimental results, summarized as clearly and economically as possible in figures, tables, equations, and schemes. The text in the paper serves just to explain the data, and is secondary. The more information can be compressed into tables, equations, etc., the shorter and more readable the paper will be. adapted from “ WhitesidesG. Adv. Mater. 2004, 16, 1375-1377.”